How You Doin'?

Well, my plan A, that the world would come to an end and I wouldn't have to wrap gifts, didn't pan out. Neither did plan B, that elves would come in the night and wrap the gifts for me. I guess things are pretty busy at Santa's workshop so he couldn't spare any of the little guys to come and help. I'm sure it's just because I'm so exhausted, but when I think about the elves making toys in the North Pole, I'm totally picturing a third world sweatshop. It's all dark and dangerous and the elves have dark circles under their eyes and an evil foreman elf is walking around the shop with a candy cane, beating the elves who slack off. Golly, that's a terrible image. That's what being stuck in your house for three weeks, trying to get ready for Christmas with children cycling illnesses will do to you! Dark thoughts, dark thoughts. Anyway, I was reduced to plan C, wrapping the gifts myself. I wrapped presents for over two hours today and I'm still not finished. The good news is that there wasn't a candy cane wielding elf to be seen.

This whole month would have been even harder, tending to sick children, staring at the four walls,  without the kindness and thanks of my little ones. Because I know that sarcasm is sometimes hard to detect in writing, I'll just tell you...major sarcasm.Yesterday, the Girl started petting my hair when I was working on the computer.

The Girl: Your hair smells good.
Me: Thanks.
The Girl: Just like turkey bacon. Do dogs follow you home?

Just those three black dogs looking at me ominously and cursing me to months of home-confinement.

Then there's the Boy. I'm pretty sure that he's responsible for this one:

I can't figure out if it came off my shirt, or if it was always stuck to the toilet. In either case, "Kick Me" stickers smack of kindness and compassion.

Then the Baby kindly styled my hair for me the other morning:

How you doin'?

Worse than the hairstyle (which is reminiscent of "There's Something About Mary") was looking at the pictures I took of myself. Some old lady is inhabiting my face and she looks disturbingly like Dad. To think I've spent years thinking that I'll end up looking like Mom and I end up looking like Dad. I did not see that one coming. Thank goodness for the lighting filters on Camera+ is all I can say.

And, I feel totally misled by the Elf on the Shelf people. I thought that the children would magically be prompted to exhibit better behavior because of the Elf threat. He's going back to the North Pole every night to give Santa the naughty or nice report on them, right? They're acting exactly the same as they always do. And Abe, the Elf, instead of providing me with any help in the way of wrapping gifts, baking cookies, or at least vanquishing my enemies is doing stuff like this:

and this:

and this:

and this:

What good is he to me? He hasn't done a darn thing to help out around here.

Ohhh. Well played, Abe. Well played.